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EspañolANAHEIM — It can’t get much worse for Edmonton Oilers general manager Stan Bowman.
His big free agent signing, Andrew Mangiapane, has been on the block for three months and will require a sweetener to be moved. Trent Frederic, signed by Bowman to an eight-year contract last summer, has three points all season long.
And now the Tristan Jarry deal is looking like the biggest disaster of the general manager’s season.
Jarry lost his team a game Wednesday in Anaheim with an atrocious performance in a 6-5 regulation loss to the Ducks, costing the Oilers two points in a key divisional battle.
Head coach Kris Knoblauch pulled Jarry after he’d allowed three goals in the opening 6:39 of the third period, wasting a 4-2 second intermission lead and leading to a wasteful 6-5 loss.
“Obviously, I wasn’t happy with the goaltending,” Knoblauch said after the game. “The goals that we gave up, especially in the third period. I didn’t like those.”
There were other mistakes there, but you need better goaltending,” Knoblauch said plainly. “Tonight wasn’t one of (Jarrry’s) best games.”
Here’s a stat we stumbled across:
The Oliers have won the expected goals battle in 19 of their past 20 games, and 28 of their past 33. Their record in those two stretches is 9-9-2, and 17-13-3.
So the analytics say they’re creating more scoring chances almost every night than their opponent, but the opponent is scoring more goals nearly half the time. That can be summed up to a poor defensive posture that allows Grade AAA chances, or it could mean the other team has the better goalie on most nights.
It was clearly the latter Wednesday in Anaheim, and truth be told, Lukas Dostal was only average in Anaheim’s net. He was coming back from the Olympics, while Jarry was fresh as a daisy — and still got sorely outplayed.
“If I make an extra save here or there, the game could be different. So I think just being better from that and just keep working,” said Jarry, offering his solution. “If I can maybe find one of those through a screen, or maybe I’m able to handle a rebound here or there… Maybe the puck doesn’t go in the middle, and I’m able to handle that a little bit better.”
With the score 2-0 Edmonton, defenceman Ian Moore — a career two-goal scorer — blasted one over Jarry’s shoulder that simply can’t go in. Then at 1:30 of Period 3, with his team ahead 4-2, Jarry booted a rebound right into the slot.
There, Evan Bouchard lost his check and Leo Carlsson scored on the rebound. Moments later, a soft floater by Olen Zellweger eluded Jarry from distance. Then a Beckett Senecke snapshot went through Jarry, after the Oilers had staked him to yet another lead, and his night was done.
“I thought we had a good start,” Jarry said. “I thought we had some traction. I thought we played pretty well. We were going to the net, and we were doing a lot of good things. We just end up on the wrong side.”
A Darnell Nurse cough-up with just over a minute to play sealed Edmonton’s fate, as Anaheim took their first lead of the game with just 1:14 to play.
You could roll out the old trope that this was simply some loose hockey being played by some tired Olympians and a bunch of guys coming off the beach in the Bahamas. But that wasn’t what happened here.
Edmonton was decent. Pretty good at times.
They earned their goals, for the most part. Matt Savoie (1-2-3) was excellent. So was Jack Roslovic and Mattias Ekholm — it wasn’t just the big boys carrying the mail.
But every time the Oilers built a lead, got a goal away from burying Anaheim, Jarry gave the Ducks life. In a game that could have been 3-0 or 5-1, it was always close, because the goalie simply did not give his team a chance to pull away.
It’s a problem now, the goaltending. And those close to this team are getting fed up with it.
OIL SPILLS — Mattias Janmark played just 2:30 and was not seen after the first period.
